We woke up around 6 am to get ready for the day and to leave the ship. We headed down to animators to eat breakfast and wait for our turn to leave. It is still so hard to hear and know when it is your turn to leave the ship. I am surprised there aren’t updates on the app. We went towards midship, so we could hear when it was our turn to get off. While we were waiting we saw a family from Winter Springs to Mom and Dad has seen. It was pretty funny since we hand’t seen them the entire time. They were in a rush, so we didn’t talk to them while they got off. Finally it was out turn to go find out bags. We found them easily and made it out of the port. We decided to walk to the train station, it was about a mile and half to get there. We took out time since we knew trains came every hour and weren’t in any big rush.
As we were walking I found an old post box with King George 6 insignia on it. That was one of things I saw would get replaced with the changing from the Queen to King. It looks like new post will have King Charle’s insignia, but they won’t have to replace everything. I was thinking that would be expensive and waste of time and money if they replaced once that are still in food condition.
We got to the train station in plenty of time to catch the 9:50am train. There were a lot of people from the cruise also at the train station. We didn’t also see tons of charter buses taking people back to the city or airports as well. The train car we got on did not have any place for your luggage expect for in the racks above the seats. So a lot of people ended up taking up too many seats since most of us couldn’t lift our suitcases that high. The closer we got to the city the more people arrive since we were headed to King’s Cross/St. Pancras station which is a main hub. I was glad we got on first and didn’t have to stand in the aisle way. Once we got off of the train we then headed to the underground to get to Victoria Station to catch the underground to the Flat we were renting. We headed out to the Henry Wise House where we were renting. The Flat was in a good location and had a lot of space. There was a little terrace outside with a couple of chairs. The stairs inside the house were a little short so it was kind of hard going up and down. Once we dropped off all our things we decided to head out and get something for lunch. We walked a couple blocks down to The Queens Arms
Very cute little place we sat on the right side of the building in the road. They are least have some barricades up so it doesn’t feel like you arena the street. Mermaid Pink Gin – Fever-Tree light tonic, strawberry, line and jumpier berries. It was missing the strawberries, but was still fun. I do not think I am a gin person. I have tried and we are going to Beefeaters Gin Distillery later.I went with the Moving Mountains Burger and the waiter came back and checked because evidently it was a plant based burger (the menu doesn’t say that), but I figured I would try it any way. It wasn’t took bad, way too much mayo. Mom ordered the Fish and Chips and we shared our food.
After lunch we headed across the street to Tesco to grab some drinks and snacks incase things were closed tomorrow for the Queen’s funeral. Then we took our stuff back to the flat to relax for a little while before heading out on our next adventure.
We walked across Vaux Haul Bridge to head to the other side of London. You can see the London Eye on the right and on the left past the tall glass building is the Queen Victoria Tower at Parliament. We decided to walk towards Lambeth Bridge and see the line of people waiting to get to Westminster Abbey to see the Queen’s coffin. The line was about 14 hours long and constantly moving, so it was a long line. I thought this fish light pole was cool. As we walked along the River Thames we were able to get better views Victoria Tower, Parliament and Big Ben (AKA Elizabeth’s Tower). These people we in line to cross the bridge to continue to make their way to Westminster Abbey. From here it is still about a half mile away from the Abbey. We stopped at the The Rose on Albert Embankment to have a drink and watch all these workers standing around. Since the funeral is tomorrow we know they will start closing down streets and getting things prepared. It is about 4pm currently on Sunday. The Queen’s funeral starts at noon on Monday. After we finished out drinks we headed over to Beefeaters Gin to hang out until our tour started. The first part of the tour is self guided, so we were let in 1 party at a time based on when you arrived. We went though reading about the history of gin. Then the end was about where the juniper from for the Gin and Ads for different counties. Once everyone had made it through we were given about 30 minutes to go through. We were taking up stairs to the tasting room.
We were given a tray of some of the spices that are used to make gin. I liked this since when I taste the alcohol I can never pick out the different things in there. Here we could actually smell or taste what goes into the gin making process.
Juniper (middle) Coriander (top small round beads) then going clockwise – dried lemon and orange peel, angelic root, angelic seeds, orris root, licorice. The only thing they didn’t put our were almonds. These are the groups of spices that go into different types of Gin. The Gin glasses at the top from left to right – Original Beefeaters, London Garden, Beefeaters 24, and Monday’s Gin. We were given a small little beaker of water to pour in the shot glass to cut the gin. And a full glass of water. Original Beefeaters the guy was saying is usually the basic gin severed at most bars unless you ask for something specific. London’s Garden is only sold at a few places in London and usually just sold at the distillery. Beefeaters 24 is a spicer Gin. Then Monday’s Gin gets its name because it goes in the still on Friday and comes out on Monday. It is only sold at the Distillery. After the tastings we went upstairs to check out the stills and where everything was made. They worker said usually they are making Gin 7 days a week, but this weekend the distiller workers hadn’t been in making gin. These contraptions allow the distillers to check and taste the gin to make sure things are consistent and on track. Once we were done looking at the stills we went downstairs and given a gin and tonic. This time we didn’t have to make our own. We sat around and relaxed while we had our drink. Then headed down to the gift shop to grab a few things. The entire tour was about 90 minutes. View of the London Eye while walking back to Vauxhall bridge. Walking across the bridge I saw a rainbow. You can see if off the right side of this picture.
As we were walking back we decided we were really hungry, so we just stopped in a small store that was open. It was about 7pm on a Sunday. We grabbed some cheese, crackers, Chips, and a sandwich. Then walked back to the Flat to relax of the evening. I found Top Gear on TV and watched some of that it was pretty funny. We also found tons of news about the Queen on a lot of the channels.
Juli's Journeys 